Around dusk this evening I went out to my car to head home after having dinner with my parents, when I noticed a bushy black tail with a white stripe on it waving around near the front of my car. Somehow my brain managed to parse "four tails" before coming to the logical conclusion of "now is clearly a bad time to leave." Needless to say, I booked it back into the house with a certain amount of haste.

My mother was rather surprised to have me come bowling back through the door I had just left from, but was quite delighted when I explained why I was suddenly inside and shutting the door. "Oh! Baby skunks!" she said excitedly. "We can watch them over the fence in the back yard!"

And so we hurried to the kitchen. I rather foolishly did not check outside before opening the door, and so I was treated to a view of not one, not two, not three or four but *five* young skunks all staring at me, tails all fluffed and pointed straight at the sky. Needless to say, that door got closed rather rapidly as well.

The skunks all vanished under my parents' deck and I was able to get out to my car unmolested, so all's well that ends with five juvenile skunks partying it up under my parents' house. But it made for an interesting adventure, since one doesn't usually encounter a horde of skunks in the middle of the city.

In completely unrelated news, my clever plan for making the Mebi manga I ordered almost two months ago show up has worked. The day after I place an order with another seller just to make sure I get a copy, the post card saying that my order's in arrives. Yay!

Your mother's reaction cracks me up! I can just picture it/hear the inflection of her voice!! Not too surprising, considering the area, and the creek nearby, but still that is awfully close...too close for comfort, IMHO - even if they are known for being great lovers of garden snails.